Self-encouragement....

What were the times you felt discouraged? Who were the people who shrank you? How did they suggest that? What happened inside when this happened? What happened to your dreams?

What were the times you felt encouraged? Who were those people who helped your inner you expand and swell with possibility? How did they stimulate that? What happened inside when this happened? What happened to your dreams?

I know I've written 'what' were the times and not 'when', but I mean that; the 'what' making the times an encapsulated bubble of memory - ones we think we have forgotten, tucked away where it doesn't matter, or even bubbles that have long popped. But is that true? If you ever find yourself feeling small, discouraged, not-good-enough, I suggest they're still there.

We can pore over the old stories, we can run the tapes in our heads again and again, trying to heal memory with the very mind that holds them tight - toxic story-telling. Or we can shift them through a myriad of different ways. But the most important thing? To see that 80% of the first paragraph came from within. Yes, we may have heard and received stimuli that created that 'shrinking' inside, but it was we who agreed to reiterate those things to ourselves over and over after the initial hearing - even if we never heard it again from the outside! The good news? If we are the ones telling ourselves these unkind things, we can change the words to kind ones. It's up to us - our choice, and nothing to do with the unchangeable outside words; they're only 20% (if that) anyway. Can you actually remember the last time someone said, straight out to your face, that you aren't any good at being 'you'? Or that you are wrong through and though? (If you can it's time for some big changes - no one ever has the right to tell you you aren't good enough, or can't do something.) And yet can you be honest with yourself and remember how recently it was that you said those things to yourself from the inside? If you are saying anything to yourself other than "I like you, thank you for doing your best - different every day, but still your best - thank you for your caring heart and willingness to wake each day and live, to hope, to serve, to inspire, and dream. I love you, even in your wonderfully messy human-ness, which still includes all those things I've just said...", how can you expect anyone else to say it to you? Or rather, to hear it when they do? Our ears are full of what we want and expect to hear - yet there is no judgement here, just a box of Q Tips and a heap of loving friendship as we go about cleaning those ears out so you may hear the opposite messages!

The method? To focus on, pore over, study, clarify, embody, allow the second paragraph to seep into your very cells.... To remember the times you felt encouraged - and not in those times you 'succeeded' (which is far too much like stressed-out-and-tried-to-be-More-than-More-could-ever-be!) but when you Just Were; maybe even having landed on your bottom with mud on your face. 

Can you think of what encouraged you? That smile of empathy, of unconditional love, of trust. A few words of encouragement; what were they? Think! Remember! Write them down and read them often and decide to believe them! The only thing that makes anything 'true' is our decision to make it so.

Who were the people who said or did the thing that encouraged you? Did they encourage you to 'do' the thing you wanted? Or did they just Encourage You To Be You? I hope it's the latter you are remembering?

What was it they did? Or said? Their tone of voice? The look in their eyes and/or on their face? The feel of any touch? The energy in them, around them, that you felt? Was it perhaps that in that moment you actually had the gift of knowing you could 'fail' and yet be as loved as you were before? Permission to let go for a moment and breathe? To be supported as you 'took stock and re-grouped yourself'? So much so that you then felt you could move forwards again?

Take a moment to remember what that encouragement felt like. Where in your body did you feel it? How? Sense it again. Deeply. The opposite of shrinking - the growing, expanding, opening - knowing you were a 'possibilitarian' again. What could you do then? Remember the feeling, not just the event.

For me? The first moment of true encouragement I remember - I am about 6, at a children's party feeling sick (as I always did at parties). But instead of my mother being called to collect me, the granny (?) took me by the hand and walked me around the garden. I can still feel that hand and see the plants at my feet, and whether she said or I sensed it, I can still remember the 'You're ok. You're fine as you are. You can be whatever you like - sick, sad, happy, ok, here, or back in the party; I will stay with you and accept you just as you are right now; I have no need to make you feel something else for my sake. I know you can handle this; I believe in you." Parties changed for me after this.

My tip? To go find those people, or people like that, once again. To begin to watch carefully who you are surrounding yourself with, and to allow those 'shrinking people' to go shrink someone else. To not just decide to live in the energy of encouragement, but to allow those who remind you how to speak encouragement to yourself to reveal the stark comparison between your inner shrinker, your judge, and their outer genuine encouragement. This enables you to at last catch that judge, inwardly smile about having seen it, and then let the judge go on a l-o-n-g holiday! Gradually, as you allow outer encouragement in, and inner encouragement to exist, more outer encouragement will come to you, and the inner encouragement will grow stronger....and on and on in that circular growth... And you will indirectly find people loving the encouragement they feel around you as it seeps out of every pore in your body. 

Truth. You are an amazing, beautiful, and powerful being. Thank you for all you are. Thank you for your dreams. Thank you for your trust and belief in being alive, and for being '________' (Insert your name here) This is the only thing asked of you; to just be the glorious '________' that you are. Go on, encourage yourself to be that; it is your birth-right.